Waiting for God
by Vashtijoy
Summary: On the night Light's father dies, Misa conceives a child. What happens next?
1. Prologue: November 11th 2010

Aizawa drives Light to Misa's hotel. He rides up with Light in the lift, goes to the door of the suite, uses the keycard for him. By then, Light is far gone enough to let him.

Misa is there, of course, waiting for him. She always is: there's no escape from her. But someone must have called ahead, because she's not sitting around in her nightwear, in the elaborate cascades of ruffles, frills and PVC that she mixes and matches to try and entice him—as if it could make a difference. She's sombrely dressed, fully covered, her hands clasped in front of her. Her eyes are red with crying, fit to match Light's own—a sharp sting across his corneas, a band of pressure round his head, all quite unfamiliar and unlike him. And pulled back into herself, solicitous and anxious to fix him (_fix something, fix anything, fix the world_), she'd asked the deadly question. "Light? Is there anything I can do? Please?"

_I just want to forget. I don't want to think. I never want to think again._ And very slowly, he advances on her.

He terrifies Misa, that night; he's cruel, like an animal; he sobs and screams and laughs like a hyena, and tears at her hair; he's never been like this with her. Impatient, he only partially unwraps her; the flimsy fabric of her underwear is shredded beneath his fingers. He's like a stranger; it's a side of him she's never seen, as if he's sprung into three dimensions, and there are whole planes, edges, surfaces that she had no idea existed.

His hands always end up in her hair, as if he doesn't want to touch her anywhere else: it makes Misa feel as if she's holy, and Light doesn't want to defile her. She never lets herself think of it any other way. His hipbones are sharp, and he's rough: they hurt her, and later she'll be bruised, but she chokes down her cries. If this is what Light needs to do to her tonight, then it's what Misa wants, too, and she welcomes all of it. Even as he's rambling, sobbing and laughing under his breath—_you're disgusting, look at yourself, I hate you_—she's looking up at him, frozen and frightened and childishly adoring, and reassuring herself, like a mantra: _I love you, I love you, I love you. Anything._

He's working himself into a fever pitch with his words, into a frenzy. And as he finally loses all control, dives off the edge, whatever analogy you like—although there are no metaphors now, no plots, no patterns: no dead parents, who can never be shown the error of their ways. Just him, and her, and so little conscious thought that he can't even be grateful for the silence. Except for his screaming, as if he's coming blood—like the blood on Misa's back, where his fingernails have torn her.

Afterwards, he turns his back, and finally falls asleep—perchance to dream.

* * *

It's a night for first times, and this is the first time Light hasn't gone to the shower afterwards: his story is that he doesn't like to dirty the sheets, and Misa believes every word. Still dutiful, though, she creeps silent to the bathroom to clean herself before she sleeps—and if she can't quite meet her own eyes in the mirror, if there are tears in them, if she's shocked and stunned and scared by the trickling blood, and the rising bruises, and the sting in her scalp where Light tore at her hair, she'll never tell anyone. She's such a good girl.

Misa finds herself not wanting to return to the bed, not wanting to be any closer to Light than the bathroom and its locking door. But she tells herself he's not himself, that he's shocked, grieving, furious, and needs someone to take it all out on (and it _should_ be her, it should, of course it should). So she does return, in the end, climbing back into her torn underwear.


	2. Chapter 1: Misa

The next few months pass in a blur, for Misa: like a faded spring day, with sun showers at dawn and downpours by evening. For a few more days she's tied up with promos and interviews for what should have been her Hollywood début. And there's always Light, of course, who she would be there for in a heartbeat but who refuses to come near her—"I'll think about it later, Misa. There isn't time now. Surely you can see that?"

Of course, there's always the chance he'll send her some important message; some important task for Kira. But besides that, he has no time for her. It hurts to think about it too deeply, so she doesn't.

She tells herself he's tied up too, with Near and Mello: those two children who want to take her Light away from her. Sometimes Misa pictures those pencilled faces, the ones Light has taken care to show her; there are to be no repeats of that long-ago fiasco with L's unexpected appearance. She lies awake at night, recreating Linda's sketches and whispering their names, as if the force of her hate alone could make the two tell-tale lines appear on them both: a number and name, inscribed in silver graphite.

It's not long after that awful night in the hotel that she gets the message she's half-expected: the one that tells her to give up her notebook, and with it all her memories of it, of her life as the second Kira, of the person those years have made her. "Her happiness as a woman", that's how Light puts it. He talks about her unspoken dreams of the two of them as a normal couple, concerned with nothing but each other, and she wonders how he could have possibly have guessed. He tells her he knows that's what she wanted. He makes her promise after promise, as sweet to her as if he'd been there in the room to whisper them to her.

She doesn't see him again for over two months. Two months, when with her memories gone, she needs him more than ever.

Misa has always prided herself on her professionalism—such a good actress! such a star! never late or rude! But with the woman she was dead, the threads of her career begin to slip through her fingers. A hailstorm, cold and hard, of one missed engagement after the next. The disappointed complaints begin to stream in: "Misa-Misa, you just aren't the same! You've picked up bad habits in Hollywood!" And she can't tell them what happened there, because she simply doesn't recall.

She finds herself staring into space more and more, and tries to describe how she feels, and can only come up with one word: _Empty. I feel empty._

And then, on top of it all, a period missed when she'd always been so regular—so regular, in fact, that she stumbles out of the apartment that day with all the fixings ready in her bag. As the day passes, she grows more and more nervous, and hops back and forth to the bathrooms so often that people start to notice.

By the time she sits in her lonely apartment that night, she knows for certain. How is she going to tell Light? What will he say? And, below the surface where she won't quite look, she knows: _angry, angry, he's going to be so angry with me for letting it happen_. But she'd been protected, hadn't she? A little beige pill, taken every morning? Has she missed a few since coming back from Hollywood?—well, perhaps. But not before then. And she knows, with the full weight of leaden loneliness that's her due, that she can only have conceived the night Light's father died.

Maybe he'll be pleased?—and for a moment, she pictures a little boy, nothing but adorable, with the deep brown eyes Light and his father used to share. Maybe he'll see it as the circle of life turning? Perhaps she can convince him to see it that way, when she tells him.

* * *

_Three months_, she thinks. _I'll tell him in three months._

After all, she knows many children don't survive that long: sick or broken, they're flushed away like dead goldfish at the fair. What if that were to happen to her? To this mix of her need and Light's mad grief that's clinging in her womb? If she doesn't tell him now, then she won't have to tell him afterwards; won't have to stand before him as he coldly measures her failure as a woman, as he's always measured everything about her. Because, she tells herself, with all the intensity of a frustrated child—fingers in ears, eyes screwed shut—he loves her. And he wants her to be perfect, like him.

But the holes in her fractured memory won't go away. More and more, she finds herself staring into space, staring into the nothingness that used to be her mind and soul. She finds she can't control herself as well as she used to: fear and rage and frustration lurk below her skin, which is thin enough to split at a moment's notice. Green poison; chemical fire.

She worries about the effect her tortured emotions are having on her baby, even as she forces herself to smile for those around her—for Mogi, mostly, and Aizawa. Once Mogi catches her staring at him, wondering what he'd be like as a father, and she quickly looks away.

She doesn't mean to start drinking. She only drinks at business meetings, with directors and producers, with the people who own her studio. One glass of wine, no more. But one day, one particularly low, lonely day, when it's too hard to pin on the smile and make the chirpy chatter she knows they need to hear, she takes two. Then another day, it's three.

Oh, she'd known the risks; she'd known she shouldn't. But what harm could one more drink do? And it was never the last, though she always meant it to be.

But it isn't until Kiyomi Takada returns from the dead that the wheels really skid from under Misa. _From the dead_, she thinks, luxuriating in the phrase, in the way it trips through her jumbled thoughts more easily than perhaps it should.

Takada—or "that bitch Kiyomi" as Misa refers to her—is an old college girlfriend of Light's. He'd dated a lot, around the time he got involved with Misa. She doesn't remember why, though his promise that he'd never do it again stands out in her memory, framed in gold. When he'd returned to college, the year after that unpleasantness with L, she'd trusted him. He always came home on time—had no choice, since he worked as the second L in the evenings, but still—and he hadn't had much time to spend away. Misa remembers no reason to mistrust him.

But simple arithmetic tells her that Light and Kiyomi spent several years in school together—_together_, the word makes her want to retch. And aren't both of them prominent by now, in their ways..? Her, the public voice of Kira, and him, the leader of the investigation _into_ Kira? The romantic part of Misa tells her it's as if Light and Kiyomi are destined to be together. But the part of her she thinks of as logical tells her that's impossible. After all, Light is destined to be with _her_.

But that knowledge, fragile as it is, isn't enough to sustain her. Not when she knows Light is spending night after night with that woman. Oh, Misa's not meant to know, but for all his steely silence, Mogi can't keep secrets from her fading smile. She pictures Light spending evenings with Kiyomi, coming home the next day with her perfume still on him. She pictures a lot of things, and her drinking gets heavier, and more reckless.

December progresses in a haze of worry, and alcohol, and pain. After each drink, she hears her son (for she's certain it is a son) crying, sees him sickly and stupid, and sees Light's forbidding glare. After each drink, she hates herself, and her commitments to life become weaker. When Mogi shows her the last-minute letter inviting her to perform in the New Year's Eve song contest Kouhaku, she barely notices.

It's not until well afterwards that the prestige of the invitation begins to sink in, and though it _does_ strike Misa that she was only asked because of her reputation as a Kira worshipper, she doesn't mind. Indeed, she throws herself into rehearsals. This is her chance to show her love for Light, she thinks. She'll give the performance of her life, then, at the peak of applause, at the height of the audience's adoration, she'll announce their engagement.

Not that she'll name him, of course. "Mr A" fits Light's known alias of Asahi, and has just the right mystique to intrigue her fans. She knows she still has some.

All through the month, she practices. She throws all her love for Light into her performance, tries to summon up all her energy and verve. But she makes mistakes: a stumble in her dance here, a bad note or forgotten lyric there. One time she even dozes off entirely. The rest of the ensemble groan and get on with their own pieces, and the director laughs nervously. "Don't worry, Misa-Misa. It'll be all right on the night, right?"

_Light_, she thinks. _I have to make it perfect for him._

When, on her big day, on the very morning of her performance, she and Mogi are ushered forcibly into a secure car, it feels like the worst thing that could have happened. "You can't do this!" she yells from the back seat, comical in all her despair. "I've already earned myself the infamous nickname of the Backout Queen!"

But even with Mogi sat beside her, she's afraid. One thing she's never forgotten, despite everything, is that other car ride years before, with Light beside her in Mogi's place, and a gunshot at the end. Sometimes she sees it in her dreams, and wakes alone with her throat still sore from screaming. Mogi is strong, and he's a big, big man, and Misa knows he'd die to protect her. What terrifies Misa, sat in the back of that car, is that he might have to.

So when, a month later, Halle Lidner puts Misa into the secured back of a car, where Mogi is waiting for her, she can't help but worry. Just like that last time, a month has passed, and now she's being driven from the place of her captivity to ... somewhere else?

Halle stops at the Teito Hotel, and checks Misa into a suite—a very expensive suite, a wide-eyed Misa can't help but notice. But then the Americans are reentering the car, and driving off with Mogi still in the back. No dramatic interlude this time; no gunshot that had left her ears ringing for days. For a moment, just a moment, Mogi glances back, and their eyes meet, and Misa can't believe Lidner's barely-intelligible words: "Mr Mogi won't come to any harm. We have a prior appointment."

Misa has stayed in many hotels during her career as an idol, and in many luxury apartments. She has a ritual that she always goes through, and this time she follows it because the alternative is to wonder about the "appointment" Lidner is taking Mogi to, and to wonder how much harm they mean him. Perhaps she worries about Mogi because the alternative is to worry about Light—that he might be at this appointment of theirs, and that his life might be at risk. It's a glimmer of a thought, but it chills her through. No. Never. Inconceivable.

When she's finally alone in the suite, it's just past ten. She's alone, a free woman, let go amidst the ruins of her career without so much as an apology. Perhaps the hotel is their substitute? Some American way of apologising? She resumes her ritual, going from sofa to bed, from bed to bath. She uncaps all the little bottles and unwraps the soap, sniffing gently to gauge how expensive it all is. It is, she concludes, very expensive. She runs a bath, thick with fragrant bubbles, soft with salts. She washes her captivity off herself; she dries herself slowly, and pulls on the soft new clothes that she's been provided with. She rests one hand on her stomach, on the life growing inside that she refused to discuss with her captors. She rubs lotion on her hands, in tiny little circular motions.

By the time she's done, it's gone midday. There's a deceptively-simple-looking clock on the wall, cased in wood. Very faintly, Misa can hear it ticking.

* * *

It's not long afterwards that her phone rings, amidst the mess of itemised possessions that Lidner was careful to hand back to her. She grabs it, jumbling the pile still further. When she sees the unusual "Light" on the panel, followed by its little electronic heart, she answers it with alacrity, falling back onto the couch.

"Light!" she yells. She hasn't heard his voice in—how long? Is it as long as two months? "I don't know why, but I'm in a deluxe suite at the Teito Hotel. Must be their way of apologising, or something! It's great!"

She listens, blissful on the comfortable couch, as he gives her instructions. It feels so familiar to her, as if he's done it many times before; and his voice sounds familiar too—low and pleased, almost purring. The sound of it makes her want to purr as well, to arch her back against his hand. She knows she's heard it before—at some point in the past, at some time when _something_ she'd done had pleased him beyond imagining—but when can it have been? How could she ever, ever have forgotten something like that?

But it doesn't take long for the room's charms to begin to pall. The TV is her only companion, and it's how she learns the fate of Kiyomi Takada, of whom she'd been so desperately jealous. It turns her cold inside. Misa had wished all sorts of horrible fates on that woman, yes, she'd wished her dead at Kira's hand over and over, but she hadn't thought it would actually _happen_.

* * *

It's the next morning before she hears anything.

"Wait there for now," he'd told her. And Misa would, of course. She could do anything for Light, much less wait around in one of the most comfortable places she's been in her busy life. But she'd expected—

No. She hadn't expected him to call, not after that last awful month with no contact from him. That's something even Misa finds hard to forgive. She'd _hoped_, then, with the same fervid hopes she lives her life by, that he'd call her in the evening. Or that Mogi would call her. Truth be told, she's more disappointed in Mogi than she is in Light. She's been carefully trained to expect nothing from Light, but Mogi was supposed to take care of her.

That's when there's a soft chime at the door. Light walks in, smartly dressed, bright-eyed, with a strange look on his face as if he's trying not to laugh aloud.

Misa feels herself rise off the couch as if she's floating. She has eyes for nothing else. The months of silence and neglect are forgotten. Mogi is forgotten, and Takada might as well never have existed. She barely hears herself scream his name, doesn't notice the pained fluctuation in his suppressed smile. Is he taller than he used to be? Is he broader around the shoulders, somehow? Something is different about him, as if he's lit from within, but she doesn't have time to register what it is, because she's flying across the room as if God had called her with a crook of one finger. But he catches her before she can knock him back into the wall, resting one hand on her shoulder and settling her in front of him. "Hello, Misa."

She can't help remembering the last time they were alone in a hotel room together, with a quiver of excitement, and fear she can't admit; she can't help thinking of her secret, the one that's starting to show beneath her clothes, a shallow bump below her stomach. Should she tell him? Is now the right time?

Light looks momentarily wry, as if he's read her mind—or at least part of it. "How have you been? I know you were detained again."

"It was _terrible!_ They didn't tie me up this time, but they wouldn't let me out of my room. And the shower was cold." She examines his face, trying to work out what's so different about him. "What about you, Light? Have you been working too hard? I bet you have!"

He doesn't answer at once, and when he does, it's with something she wasn't expecting. "Kiyomi's dead," he says, watching her face. Misa hears herself gasp, more in shock that he's told her than at the fact itself.

"I—I know. It was on the TV," she says hesitantly, watching him in return. He doesn't seem to care; doesn't seem upset about it. But that's a good thing, right? That means it was really Misa he loved all along, right? "But—"

There's an awkward pause. Light doesn't snap, the way he might have ordinarily, but he does chivvy her along. "But?"

She quails a little from his tone. "But it seems such a horrible way for her to die. I thought Kira would have taken better care of her."

Now it's his turn to pause. An eyebrow arches, and he turns away, sounding curt. "Really, Misa, sometimes you amaze me with the sensibilities you ascribe to Kira."

Her face falls. She hasn't upset him, has she? When he'd been in such a good mood? "I'm sorry! It's just—for her to die like that—" Now that Takada is safely dead, after all, Misa can be magnanimous.

Light turns back to her, face carefully set. The two of them are still standing in the entrance to the suite; he leads Misa further inside, away from the door. "He's just killed the taskforce. All of them, even Matsuda, and you ask how he could do something like that? Come on, Misa."

Her hands go to her mouth, shocked, but don't quite touch. "Matsuda-san is dead? And Mogi-san..?"

"Mogi too. And Aizawa, and Ide. It's _too_ bad." His voice almost cracks as he says it—though not quite—and Misa gives him a considering look of her own. She hears a long-ago voice, one that's mostly silent now. _Light is Kira, and Misa Amane, you are the second Kira._ She can imagine what L would have made of this, of how Light seems so secretly, irrepressibly pleased, when all his colleagues are dead.

"He killed ... _all_ of them? Except for you?"

Light's eyes narrow a fraction, hooding over barely perceptively; but Misa is quick enough to notice it. "I wasn't there myself, you understand. He wasn't able to see me."

"But that's good!" she explains, quickly. What if it was true; what if Light really had been Kira? Why does it feel like she hasn't suspected it before? And why does it feel like she'd be in danger, if she knew? _Misa's just being stupid. Light would never hurt me!_ But the pictures on the TV, the ruins of the burnt-out church, won't leave her mind's eye. Her voice becomes coaxing. "Misa would have died herself, you know, if anything had happened to you."

"I know you would, Misa." He rests a hand on her shoulder again, and that purring sensation in her chest blots out everything else. "Get your bag, and let's get out of here."

She rushes to get it, eager to gather up her few things and get out of that hotel once and for all. But Light is behind her, so she can't see the cold, considering appraisal he gives her, as if he's weighing her worth and her life with one careless finger.


	3. Chapter 2: Light

"I'm not holding it, Misa."

"Li-ight! You _should_ hold her. And she's not an _it, _don't be like that."

Not listening, he disappears through to his office, his sanctuary; the sight of his back is something Misa's more than accustomed to. It means she can't see the sullen revulsion warping his face—usually for her, but today, it's also for the sounds and smells of the new baby.

It's when the child is finally (finally!) quiet in its crib, and Misa has taken the opportunity to make her tentative way to the bathroom, that Light indulges his curiosity and comes back through to take a sneaking look at the thing. It's something he made, after all, even if he plans to have as little to do with it as possible, even if it's irreparably tainted by having come out of Misa. It's wrapped in a blanket, which obscures its face, and it's wearing a hat; he reaches down to twitch the blanket aside—

It's lying there, silent, _looking_ at him, with black hair, and huge eyes, dark, dark brown, wide like pools; even though he knows it can't focus yet, the stare is effective. Its pink mouth is open. Something tightens around Light's finger, all hungry, seeking instinct: it's a tiny hand. Light raises an eyebrow. _Manipulative little thing. Did she get that from me, or from Misa, or just from being a child?_ Having detached himself, he replaces the blanket.

Behind him, as he heads back to his desk and his window, Ryuk heckles, "Looks like a slug to me, Light. It'll be more fun later, right?"

Face firmly out of sight, Light scowls.

* * *

A flat, bald statement from the shinigami, a week later: "It's not human until you can kill it."

Light's forgotten how to be horrified, how to fear; long dead, those emotions, back before the warehouse and the bodies on its floor, all in practical suits except for one in white flannel. But there's something chilling about the casual way Ryuk volunteers that. Resting his hands on the windowsill, Light doesn't look towards the shinigami. "Cot deaths. That's how you get the most bang for your buck, is it?" The crude proverb's not like him; he doesn't entirely approve.

"'Course it isn't, Light." It's typically amoral. "We can't kill them right away, not for 780 days. But you can get eighty, ninety, a hundred years out of one of those, easy. Want me to tell you how long that one has got?"

Now Light does shoot Ryuk's reflection a scathing glance. "I know perfectly well you can't tell me." _Find a smarter game to play._

At that, the shinigami laughs: that wicked-sounding _hyuk hyuk hyuk_ that grates on Light's ear. "So defensive. Never thought I'd see you make a fool of yourself over a woman, no matter how small."

"As if that could happen." Slipping his hands into his pockets, Light turns around, away from the window. "It's Misa's child, not mine. It will occupy her. There's no reason for it to be important to me." Glancing back to the colours in the darkness, to Tokyo and all its people prostrate before him, he smiles. It's there and gone again, too pleased with itself; it has sharp corners. "After all, I have millions of children to care for already."

Unsurprisingly, Ryuk is less than impressed. "Eh, you're no fun sometimes, Light. I could still write your name in my death note and kill you, you know," he sighs, turning on his floating feet and offering a retreating black-feathered back.

Light isn't worried; he hears that particular threat at least once a week. "Ryuk." It's very soft, even silken, as the shinigami threatens to go and see what Misa's up to; she can't see Ryuk, or hear him, but he remembers a time when she could. "Misa's attached to that infant, as I expected. I dread to think how she might inconvenience me if something were to happen to it. But if it ever did—even if Misa were to drop it headfirst—don't expect any more apples to make their way into this house."

Even after all these years, it seems like a laughable threat; even as Ryuk's blustering protests are giving that the lie. Perhaps Light hasn't entirely forgotten fear after all.

* * *

In the end, it's Light who names her Mika, with the kanji for "sea" and "flower": sea of flowers, flower ocean. Something suitably pretty and girly. Misa is astonished when he suggests it, taking the first kanji from Misa's own name; she's overwhelmed with love and gratitude, just as he'd known she'd be. So easy to pull her strings, even more so now that the child takes up all of her time. She's determined to be the perfect mother, to be there always, to get everything right. Just as Light had predicted, she frees him almost entirely.

There's also the implication of spelling it backwards, which is where Light insinuates himself: _kami_. "God". There's even a reference to his closest follower there, if you look for it, though that's a coincidence.

Light doesn't view it as compromising his determination to stay distant from that child and its animal unpleasantness, and from the purely human vulnerability it represents. Names are everything to him, the source of all his power. If there's anywhere he should be involved, he tells himself, that's where it is—even if stealing names, rather than giving them, is more his style.

* * *

Misa tries hard. She loves Mika more than her own life. She wants the three of them to be a real family, like the one she remembers, like she remembers Light and his family being. She wants to believe it's possible. Over and over, she tries to get Light more involved with his daughter. She doesn't expect him to feed her, to change nappies or launder or cook—the maid who's ordered to the fire escape's doorway each morning takes care of the dogwork. Light makes excuses, the way he always has—_it's just me now, Misa. I won't forgive Kira. I'll find him—_and returns to the office with its walls of screens, to smirk to himself and enjoy his solitude, and to draw the strings of his control together in ever-more-intricate knots. Each morning and evening he looks in on the crib, and asks after her—_how have things been, Misa? oh? that's nice._ Each time he asks, Misa sinks a little further into her fractured, forgetful depression, and Light will never care enough to see it.

For all that he considers himself piercingly observant, Light lacks an eye for everyday tedium. He never sees Misa withdrawing, quieter, fading, all her efforts tied up in making sure Mika is the most adored baby in Japan, the cleanest, the most beautifully dressed. He doesn't even notice Ryuk spending more time in the living sections of the apartment, watching Misa and the baby as if he's waiting for something. Misa's Valentine gifts to Light have become increasingly extravagant, as his limited interest in her has tailed off, and that year she surpasses herself.

It's a normal day; nothing untoward or amiss. Light is, astoundingly, absorbed in his work; the feasibility studies he's compiling are fascinating stuff, concerning the setup of a fake paramilitary resistance to Kira. As well to give the malcontents a harmless outlet, and then they can be siphoned off, isolated cell by isolated cell. Indeed, used appropriately, they might even drive some of the waverers into his arms. So much of what he does, now that the Wammy orphans are apparently wiped out, is reading and research, the continuation of a pastime he's had his whole life long. Given that he can remake the whole world, what should he change, and how?

Still, all this can't hold his attention entirely; a couple of the screens carry those flashy pro-Kira broadcasts. There's always something; there are dedicated channels now, 24 hours a day; there are the word-of-God official broadcasts from the new girl at NHN—Light will always think of her as "the new girl", for all that he's communicated with her regularly and anonymously for far longer than Takada held her unfortunate position; there are the grovelling genuflections that all the channels make, without exception, those servile acknowledgements of the way things are. It's a constant stream of prayer into his eyes and ears, and Light approves. More than approves.

It's not until he opens the inner door to his soundproofed sanctum that he realises there's a problem. The child is screaming in its crib, with a terrified edge as if it thinks it's the only human alive, and Misa is nowhere to be seen. Light's first instinct isn't to wonder where she is, or why she's left the child alone, or even to go to the baby; it's fury, wordless, worn-in and sour, that she isn't there to do her job and shut the thing up. For all that he's developing some minor interest in it, that doesn't mean he wants to see it too often, or touch it, or hear it at all. Misa must be in the apartment; if she'd gone anywhere, the child would have gone with her.

That's when he peeps out from his bubble of self-centredness long enough to realise that something must be wrong. Every day before, when he's come out in the early evening, Misa's been there to pull the child's blanket back and tell him how well she's doing, and insist how clever she is for her six months. Has Misa been quieter? Has she been a little less enthusiastic every day? He doesn't think it's just his morbid mentality running away with fantasies again; the thoughts are uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons, and yet he knows Misa would never abandon that infant. She'd never abandon _Light_; she rests secure beneath his hand as surely as if there are wires running from his fingers to all her major joints.

When he emerges onto the top floor, Ryuk is there behind him, drifting in silence. He's almost invariably either with Misa or with Light, so it would be natural to ask where she was, but Light doesn't. He doesn't even look back, for that matter; she can only be in the upstairs bathroom or the bedroom. It's because he checks the bathroom first that he finds her so quickly. The door isn't locked; it's one of those twist-types like his childhood bedroom had, with the slot that's vertical for open and horizontal for closed. When there's no response to his brisk tap, he turns the handle and pushes it open.

It's the smell that hits him hardest. Light's never cared for strong smells, and the bathroom stinks like a meat locker. There's a foul, floral undertone to it, which—Light notes, focusing queasily on the little glass containers, rather than at the fishbelly-white limbs and the scarlet water around them—is from the scented candles that have burned themselves out around the bath, and across the counter in front of the huge mirrored wall. There's no window in the room, or doubtless she'd have lined up candles there too, with that equidistant spacing that's so exact that Light could even approve of the symmetry.

As the thing she's done hits him, he spins back the way he came, as if the fact of death, of _this_ death in _this _place, has taken him by the arm and pushed him bodily away from her. In the corridor, he pulls the door shut with an inadvertent slam, and falls back against the pale wood panels, straining for breath to clear the taste of blood out of his mouth and nose. And as the shock of it clears, several points present themselves for his consideration. Some of them are problems, and some of them are not; the first, and the most immediate, is that Ryuk is laughing.

* * *

The funeral of an idol is no small affair. Misa is cremated in Kyoto, laid to rest beside her mother and father, murdered so long ago. As the baby is watched over by the nurse he's already hired, Light bends down to lay a single white rose at the graveside. There's no waiting around here; no crazy laughter or rejoicing that she's gone. Instead, he watches for a few moments, almost as if the silence can apologise for all he's done. Then he turns, straight-backed, and walks away, thinking of the note Ryuk had pointed out to him in the bathroom. _I know Light will love her better if Misa isn't here._

Even after the funeral, Light comes no closer to parenting his daughter. There are more nurses and nannies, a sequence of them, let go on one pretext or another, paid off with the dwindling remnants of L's fortune. And there are those strange, half-studied moments at the end of each day, when Light performs his ritual of stopping by the cot, by the playpen, by the nursery. Those eyes, looking back at their only familiar face with what seems to him like dull vacancy, and not the babyish intelligence that young children can show; and that deep red, beginning to glint in the black of her hair. It feels like an omen, and he laughs at himself for being tempted by anything so weak and human. The infant softness of her face is far more like Misa—except just sometimes, she'll smile too fast, unexpectedly fox-faced, and then she's Light all over again.

What there are not, at any point, are visits with Light's family, with the empty ruins of his mother and sister. Sayu speaks intermittently, but won't stay in the room for any talk of Kira. His mother, now, is the silent one—his busy, bustling Sachiko, who always had some reprimand or worry on her lips. She sits all afternoon, heavily tranquillised, holding cups of tea which Sayu makes for her, which then go cold, or as often as not spill onto the floor. Light knows this, because he kept up the monthly visits until Misa's death provided an excuse to withdraw from them.

With some semblance of regret, he acknowledges it's possible that the child might have brought a smile to his sister's face, that she might have given his mother the new reason to live she so badly needs. But all along he'd known—despite Aizawa's unvoiced concerns—that there could be no swinging them to Kira's cause, not with his father dead. Oh, he could explain matters; he could argue that Sayu's kidnap and Soichiro's murder stemmed not from Kira, but from those Kira destroyed. He could do it subtly, delicately, over years, and he could make followers of those two women who'd lost more to Kira than anyone else on the planet.

But he doesn't have the time. Not with a baby in the picture. So along with the sight of Misa in the bathtub, along with the calm voice of the ambulance control on the end of the line, had come the equally calm assurance that his mother couldn't be allowed to raise his child. Sachiko would have loved Mika, would have given her the family life that Light wasn't inclined to provide. But his interest in the child, so rooted in theory rather than practice, wouldn't allow for Kira's daughter to be raised by a pair of apostates.

His work never ends, for all that it's falling into tighter, more regular patterns. Mika is raised by strangers. Taught alone, she's introduced to playmates, chosen with the care given to ambassadors in enemy states. And as tiny feet roam the rooms in the neighbouring apartment, and as thousands more die each month at Light's hand and at Mikami's, the world outside slouches slowly towards perfection.


	4. Chapter 3: Mika

All her days start out the same.

She wakes in the simple room that's her very own. There are windows, and a balcony, but the air vents perform most of the ventilation. Most days, she makes her bed herself, though if she's feeling particularly contrary she'll leave it for the maid. She picks out clothes to suit the girl she'll be that day, and she showers, and she dresses in elaborate beading and net from Harajuku, or elegant monochrome from Ginza, or, more usually, somewhere in between. Some mornings she'll have breakfast made for her, even brought to her room, but more often these days she'll poke around the kitchen for toast or soup or eggs, or for some experimental concoction of her own. Today it's satsuma segments steamed in a French omelette. The juice leaks from the fruit and curdles the egg fold, which isn't quite sealed, and doesn't overlap properly. She eats it anyway. It's wrong to waste food when so many are starving; her father says so, in almost the same tone as Aoki-sama on NHN, in almost the same words, but Mika's inclined to let them have that one. She's sixteen years old.

Before she goes downstairs each day, she takes the silver moon pin from its box and fastens it at her collar, and when she goes back to her room she takes it off again. People notice if she doesn't wear it, and she has to set a good example.

For it's not that Mika doesn't know there's a world outside the walls of the compound; she's seen it. She visits shops, which are cleared for her convenience, and gardens and libraries and museums, which catch her interest in odd places; she'd sit for hours watching the comings and goings of bees behind glass, or following the grooves and crenellations of a pot left by the Jomon. Yet she doesn't know the jostle of a crowd, or the experience of a car ride without a driver and a police escort, or the smell of a subway carriage in high summer - in fact, she's never ridden the subway. She's young, and sheltered, and all of her restrictions chafe around her neck.

She thinks she knows the reason for it all, and honestly, she understands - that L's Army like to abduct the relatives of prominent Kira worshippers, and that there aren't any as prominent as her father is, for all that his identity is a state secret. The victims are sometimes retrieved, and the perpetrators are suitably punished, and yet there are always fanatics ready to step up. Mika doesn't begin to know how Kira-sama - even in her dreams of rebellion, it's unthinkable not to use the honorific - how he does what he does. _But what about what I want? Is it really right for one person to be in charge just because they can kill you? What about mistakes?_ All the old, hackneyed arguments, the ones any schoolchild can counter, by now - and yet Mika can't help giving an ear to them, in secret. She knows how horrified her father would be if he ever found out.

* * *

Even as a small child, Mika knows that her father's family didn't worship Kira. and there are novels about this, families divided, friendships split; sacrifice has become a huge thread in the popular culture. It teaches people how to deal with increasing death, with scarcity and loss in a world that's ever more circumscribed.

On the first of each month, her father doesn't come home until late; sometimes he has scratches on his face, or it's reddened as if he's been slapped. Every time, he brings Mika some small, impermanent trinket, and she kisses him on the cheek - whichever one isn't bruised or bleeding - and tells him she loves him. Mika can't think of anyone who'd dare attack her father, who's never out of sight of his security in public. She can't imagine him letting anyone do it, never mind over and over again. It worries her, and yet she looks forward to these strange, irregular meetings. They're the closest thing she has to family.

* * *

Early one morning, when Mika is ten, her father joins her in her bedroom, pale and red-eyed as if he hasn't slept, wearing a black suit and a black tie. "Your aunt is dead."

Mika's first reaction is surprise: _I have an aunt?_ But her father is still speaking, issuing instructions as she supposes he does all day at work. "We'll be attending the funeral this afternoon. It will be—strange; she never understood. She didn't believe, the way we do." It doesn't occur to Mika to backchat, to tell him that she's never attended a funeral and wouldn't know if rebel services featured sharks falling from the moon.

His eyes sharpen on her, drawing her attention back to him, and she wonders if he's even aware he does that. "I know you won't disappoint me, Mika."

The funeral is in Kyoto, where Mika is vaguely aware that her mother's family, and further back, her father's came from. For a couple of hours, as she's prepared to leave, she wildly hopes they'll ride the bullet train to get there, but no; a large, dark government car comes around to the front of the house to collect them, along with a police escort.

Mika's attuned to her father's secret expressions, which are hidden and barely there at all. This one's disapproval, or disappointment, a slight crinkle of his nose, though not as bad as the times she's had a piece of work marked lower than a 5. Something she's done is annoying him. Quickly, she runs a check: her hair is neat, her shoes polished; her manner subdued. Her whole appearance is as perfect as her current supervisor could make it. She hasn't brought more than a small bag with a handkerchief and one book, which she spent some time choosing, to be sure it wasn't too frivolously enjoyable.

The more she thinks about it, the more she thinks it's something to do with her clothes. Perhaps the respectful pleats in her black skirts are out of place, or the matching ribbon in her hair is tied unevenly? But that wouldn't be her fault, she's quick to remind herself; Fukumura-san chooses her clothes and keeps her presentable. There's nothing _Mika _can be blamed for, surely?

They sit next to each other in the car, on opposite edges of the back seat: the nervous, silent little girl with her book, and the eloquently silent man taking notes as the car purrs along, unable to put his work away even for this. Eventually he flicks another glance sideways to her, and his pencil pauses, and all he says to Mika is, "You look like your mother."

Mika never wears black again; she feels guilty for being pleased by what he said. She has pictures; she has recordings of all her mother's films; she knows Misa-Misa was a beautiful woman. But she doesn't want her father to be upset with her, not that day, not ever; not when he's so distant, when his approval is so hard to win.

* * *

There is a piano at the far end of the house from her father's rooms, a gorgeous affair of rosewood and spruce. Mika sits at it for hours, practicing arpeggios and scales and rehearsing exam pieces. Then she sits for hours more, playing for her own pleasure: complicated, rippling pieces in jaunty keys. Sometimes she stumbles and repeats herself until she's perfect. Sometimes she sings under her breath, before closing the lid with a reserved smile and hurrying off to one of the other million things she has to do that day.

She's never been encouraged to waste time, not by her father or by the society she lives in. Her pursuits are all worthy enough—her lessons, her piano-playing, the sedate worship meetings she attends, with her carefully-screened coterie of friends. Or rather, "friends". There's a wall between her and them, something all of them see but never speak of, something any child asked to play with the boss's daughter would recognise. Oh, the gatherings are friendly enough, and to an extent the girls have fun, but there are no confidences shared between them, and no harebrained schemes embarked on.

No, her favourite pastime is one she does alone, an essentially solitary activity. Once a week, she dresses in loose clothes, and pads her elbows and knees, and makes her expert way to the top of an empty climbing wall nearby.

The wall is high, and slants at odd angles. It's spattered over with handholds of all colours, and Mika loves it. It's built outside, and while nobody else is ever there when she is, she doesn't think many others can get as high as she does. How long ago had it been, that she'd first stared from her window at the birds in the sky, and wondered how they got there? Was it the evening she'd toddled past her father, brought out to meet him on some flying visit or other, and a flock of geese had soared past the windows in a perfect arrow-shape?

She'd cried out for the joy of it, she remembers: the birds in the sky, moving so fast in their formation. And that had been when her father said, without even looking up from the papers on his lap, "They're just birds, Mika."

He hadn't even been angry, she recalls. In retrospect, she knows he wasn't paying attention. Perhaps that memory of the birds was why she first started to climb - loose walls in the gardens, first of all, then steeper ones to get her onto rooftops. Shortly afterwards, her nurse had taken her to her first climbing wall, where she could be properly supervised and taught.

Most of her interests ended up that way - regimented into regularity, into just another part of her routine. They became school. But she'd submitted, and she'd learned, and by now she can sit on top of the wall, with her harness there for lip service, and the city spread out before her, and nobody but God above and the birds in the sky to watch her. She doesn't look down to enjoy the elevation, to see the world below made small, the better to fit in her hand. She looks down at the streets and houses to imagine herself there.

* * *

Mika has her mother's energy, and a respectable portion of her father's intelligence. Perhaps it's only to be expected that the pat answers to life she's provided with don't satisfy her. Over time, the little doubts and questions build: _why Kira? Where did he come from? How does he do it?_ _Why? _She wants a better answer than no answer; better questions than "Who says so?"

Nobody knows who started wearing the little moon-shaped pins first, or who decided that Kira, the ever-present watcher and judge of all, should be represented by the crescent moon. Perhaps it's that the moon is up in the sky; that it sees everything done in darkness. Perhaps it's just that, from its earliest days, the most dedicated followers of Kira the Saviour have had a distinctly gothic bent. But the little pins appeared, here and there, cast in silver: a fashion first, a way for the devout to show their devotion, and later a shibboleth, something noticed not by its presence, but by its absence.

Mika receives her pin from her father, some time after they've become suitably respectable things to wear, pinned on a lapel or a scarf or a blouse pocket. She pins it on straight away, of course, and for a long time she's never without it. She believes in Kira-sama with a child's devotion, and in her father almost as strongly; the little pin is a tie to them both.

But over time, she finds herself less proud to wear it: rather than lifting her up, the pin weighs her down. It's as if the oceans of dead are tied to it; the lists are published every day, and she sees them in the centre of the newspaper, along with their crimes. She sees them listed, along with their crimes—murder, rape, sedition—and she wonders how it's possible that so many crimes still happen, when Kira has been watching over the world for longer than she's been alive. She thinks of what she's read of the old tyrannies, of the elaborate mechanisms they'd constructed to ensure obedience, of how people would use the system to settle old scores. She thinks of the subtle signs of misery she's seen in the world outside. _What makes Kira immune to that? _she wonders. _Is he smart enough, is he well-informed enough, that he can tell the innocent from the guilty every time? If there were people he didn't like, for whatever reason, would they just disappear?_

When she finally sets down the pin, in the privacy of her own room, it feels like fireworks in her heart: like a personal revolution, that could all too easily turn into a heart attack. Removing the pin becomes a habit, and Mika gets careless; eventually Suzuki-san passes through her room, notices that the pin is missing, and stammers to a halt before carrying on. Nothing is said, at least to her, and Mika is a little relieved. Her conscience is sharpened to a needle point, and even in her dreams of rebellion, the idea of having done something wrong is agony.

Though Mika has no idea of the background, Light has mostly maintained the habit he formed back when he used to visit his sister, of visiting his daughter privately on the first of each month. It's on one of those sad evenings that Mika finally works herself up to speak something she's wondered about for a long time. It's early in April, in her sixteenth year, and her father has brought her a cupcake, sparsely decorated with pink sakura swirls and suggestions of green leaves. She won't eat it while he's there; instead, she'll keep it till morning, when she can eat it forkful by slow forkful and pretend, torn between desire and fear, that she sees him every week.

"It's odd, isn't it," she says haltingly, thinking of the simple moon-symbol that represents her father's given name, nervous and excited with the significance of what she's saying. "It's odd that Kira-sama's symbol is a moon, and you - you're a moon, too..."

Catching his eye, she sees he's giving her a most peculiar look, as if he's never noticed her before. Her voice trails off. "I-it's just something I noticed."

There's a long, pregnant pause. For a second, it looks as if her father is listening to something; it often does, Mika's noticed, when he's thinking. Then, smooth as ever—not predatory, not like a stalking cat, why would she think that?—he crosses the room towards her.

"You're a clever girl, Mika-chan." Slowly, he reaches out to press on the tip of her nose: _boink_. "But there's such a thing as being too clever. You don't need to make up stories."

What he doesn't have to tell her, what he knows is understood from her upbringing and her life and her carefully constructed world, is how unhealthy it could be.

* * *

Yet something about that exchange rankles; something about it disturbs her charmed equilibrium. Things resolve into clarity, into new patterns that hadn't been evident before. Is her father Kira?—of course not. Even before his reprimand, she'd known that was nothing but a silly fantasy. But he's as close as you get. Mika hears his voice on TV constantly, that voice without a picture to go with it; she knows that what Kira dictates, her father executes. He's not God, but he's the one in immediate command.

It hits Mika that it's the same sort of command he executes over her, shut away in their remote complex as she is, with her friends vetted and her teachers hers alone, with the world outside shut off to keep her safe inside it. She's in a bubble, small and secure, but walled in nonetheless. So what of the world outside? Isn't that in a bubble, too..?

_But it's not his fault. He doesn't set the terms of the bubble. He does what Kira-sama tells him..._

The thought strikes her as unconvincing and convincing all at once; it calls to mind images of her father standing in her room, calmly stonewalling her requests for greater freedom, as well as him towering over the tiny girl she'd been, with bruises blooming on his cheek. In control, or not? What is it about the contradiction that makes her uneasy, that doesn't make sense?

_Well,_ she decides. _He might not be able to control the world outside as much as he'd like. But I know it's not Kira-sama who's decided how I should live. That's all him._ She falters, realising it's very possible that Kira _has _told his closest servants to keep their vulnerable relatives secured, though she knows her friends have more freedom than she does. With more power comes more danger, she supposes...

She sits there for quite a while, having angry thoughts and arguing them back down again. The only one that emerges and refuses to be stilled into submission is a desire—a need, even—to see the world for herself. Running away? She's not going to. What would she do out there? Who is there for—well, the house isn't exactly awash in company for her, but the supervisors and teachers keep coming, and her father at least visits when he can.

She's seen the world around them from the back seat of government cars; she can use a map. From her vantage point on top of the climbing wall, she's seen it all—the streets, the houses, the mobs of swarming people and the mazes of traffic. She has it all planned out—how she'll scale the compound wall to escape, how she'll evade the guards with their leashed dogs. What she'll carry in her small bag: her personal ID, in case she's stopped, her cellphone, turned off, in case she needs money. She's planned her route, the places she wants to go, the things she'll do. She thinks the chances of anything going wrong are minimal.

After all, what harm could just one day do?


End file.
